Mark Edwards teaches American history and politics at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. He has published numerous articles, including in Diplomatic History, Religion and American Culture, and Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions. His first book, The Right of the Protestant Left, is due out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. He is currently at work on a related project, The Christian Origins of the American Century: A Life of Francis Pickens Miller. Welcome to Mark!by Mark Edwards

The Last Temptation of Christ (1953) is
communist subversion. A President
follows “God’s Float” into office.
Security analysts begin to stockpile WMRs (Weapons of Mass
Re-enchantment). Creation Science videos
become mandatory viewing for over 200,000 GIs.
Twenty-five million Americans pledge a dollar apiece to build a “Freedom
Bell” for West Berlin. Radio-vangelists
from Mars (the “red” planet, no less!) spark a global Christian groundswell,
culminating in the collapse of the Communist bloc. These stories and more are contained in
Jonathan P. Herzog’s study, The Spiritual-Industrial Complex (2011).
The simple pleasure of the read notwithstanding, the real strength here
is Herzog’s situating of Christian anticommunism within public and private institutions. While the narrative of 1950s spiritual
revival is a familiar one, no one has yet offered an empirical explanation for
it. Herzog shows convincingly how a
myriad of elites manufactured civil religious consent as a “bulwarks” as well
as battering rams against “secularism,” the firstfruits of international communism
(8).

Herzog offers
and carries through on at least two arguments.
First, he argues that the post-World War II revival was the result of
series of undercover policy decisions. While
state and security personnel did draw upon earlier theological analyses of communism
as a demonic faith, the Christianization of the burgeoning Military-Industrial
Complex (Herzog focuses mainly on Christian influences) was nevertheless “conceived
in boardrooms rather than camp meetings”
(7). Herzog’s recovery of U. S.
Information Agency (USIA) propaganda, the Fort Knox experiment in universal
military training, and the joint government/business Religion in American Life
(RIAL) ad campaign, among other richly detailed examples, more than justify his
central claim and imagery. He notes the
paradox of a Christian crusade sustained by secular agencies (12). Second, Herzog argues that the treasure trove
of Jesus Junk produced by the Spiritual-Industrial Complex weakened public
Protestantism in the long run. This
claim is less well developed than the first.
All the same, Herzog has led me to think about how the Supreme Court
decisions against school prayer and Bible reading were consistent the Court’s earlier
attack on the perceived excesses of the McCarran and McCarthy scares.

Herzog’s thoughts on secularization possibly
constitute a third argument. At first, I
felt the author was introducing unwarranted abstraction into his otherwise
impressive empirical account. However,
it was refreshing to find someone finally drawing upon the insights of
Christian Smith’s collaborative project, The
Secular Revolution (2003). As Herzog
notes, Smith understands secularization as a product of inter-group struggles
for influence (10). One implication of
this theory is that the religious right isn’t paranoid since “secular
humanists” really are out to get them.
As Herzog ably demonstrates, though, Smith’s work places future study of
secularization squarely in the hands of the historian. The very existence of the
Spiritual-Industrial Complex proves that secularization is not an irreversible
process but rather a time and place specific phenomenon. Conversely, “sacralization” (Stark’s and
Finke’s term for the “reendowment of religion with perceived political, social,
economic, or intellectual value”) can also be constructed and deconstructed
through collective human effort (11). It
is hard to see what the materialism displayed during the Nixon-Khrushchev “Kitchen
Debate” (1959) had to do with nuking the Spiritual-Industrial Complex, especially
since celebrations of American abundance (“better fed than red”) had been
crucial ingredients in anticommunism since Herbert Hoover. Still, Herzog’s revisioning of secularization
does ask us to set aside our typical condescension towards 1950s “faith in
faith.” Christian containment culture
was remarkably sincere if also quite fragile.

Herzog’s book joins a number of
wonderful recent works on postwar public religion, including (but certainly not
limited to) Angela Lahr’s Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares (2007), Andrew Finstuen’s Original Sin and Everyday Protestants(2009),
Jason Stevens’s God-Fearing and Free(2010),
Darren Dochuk’s From Bible Belt toSunbelt (2010), and Kevin Schultz’s Tri-Faith
America(2011). Taken together, the
net effect is to unsettle each other’s studies.
For instance, would Herzog’s Complex have become operative if it were
not for the prior mainstreaming of premillennialism by Lahr’s
evangelicals? Or did mass-produced
belief in the American Way of Life enjoy stronger sales than did fears of the
apocalypse? Similarly, what was the
relationship between self-made re-sacralization and Protestant American
anxiety, as explored respectively and respectfully by Finstuen and Stevens? To what extent does Dochuk (as well as Steven
Miller) force Herzog to admit that the Spiritual-Industrial Complex was a negotiation
between “plain folk” believers, their preachers, and a spiritual power
elite? This is especially relevant since
Herzog draws heavily upon Dochuk and Lahr when making his final claim that the
Complex helped coalesce the postwar New Right.
Or, does Herzog’s evidence suggest that Dochuk (and Bethany Moreton, for
that matter) rages against Thomas Frank in vain? Finally, is the notion of an inclusive,
monolithic Spiritual-Industrial Complex all that helpful given Kevin Schultz’s
admirably nuanced narrative of religious-conflict-within-thin-consensus? Certainly, my intent is not to blacklist any
of these books. Far from it; the
questions arising from them beg for a fuller historiographical essay.

As a point of minor criticism, I did search Herzog’s work in vain for
diversities of Christian anticommunism. Herzog
discusses the National Association of Evangelicals, but the much larger National
Council of Churches is not mentioned.
The World Council of Churches is misleadingly referenced as a mouthpiece
for Eisenhower, Dulles, and the USIA. Herzog
is obviously aware of the World Council’s early commitment to superpower
“co-existence,” yet his approach leaves the impression of a religious
conformity to Washington-Whitehall priorities that rarely existed. Those shortcomings are part of a larger
neglect of liberal anticommunism in general.
Does it really matter that Christian Americans used the Cold War differently,
some to roll back New Deal social rights and others to advance them? Probably.
At the very least, we need to remember that J. Vernon McGee and Carl
McIntire are not America (yet).

Of course,
Herzog’s intent was to establish the common institutional origins and nature of
the 1950s religious revival, not explore its every political economic consequence. In that purpose, Herzog has more than
succeeded. The Spiritual-Industrial Complex should be ideal for sparking
undergraduate and graduate interest in a nation with the soul of a predator drone.

Mark. Thanks for this fine piece. "Nation with the soul of a predator drone"? I can imagine Sidney Mead turning over in his grave if this expression supplants his "nation with the soul of a church." I am quite eager to hear more about the very point you feel Herzog does not develop (as you argue): that public Protestantism was weakened in the long run by the "treasure trove of Jesus Junk produced by the Spiritual-Industrial Complex." First, I was wondering what is meant by "public Protestantism," especially in light of your point that the National Council of Churches is slighted (does that also mean that liberal Protestants in general are left out of his narrative?). Second, how did this Jesus Junk weaken public Protestantism? Though you indicate he does not develop this claim, I was wondering about what evidence he does find for this assertion. Of course, I realize I should simply go out and get the book now that you've prompted all these questions. So good to see this book reviewed alongside the others. Great work.

1) The liberal/conservative Protestant divide does not become operative in the book until the last chapter. One can see how this serves Herzog's aim of establishing a common Spiritual-Industrial Complex, but his inattention to liberals is a relative shortcoming.

2) On "public Protestantism," I meant something akin to civil religion. On "Jesus Junk," the proloferation of "Under God," "In God We Trust," etc. In his introduction, Herzog suggests that the sacralists went too far and caused a secularist backlash. His chapter on critics of the Complex suggests something like a backlash did occur (I never put the Supreme Court decisions in this framework before, but maybe I'm just slow), but it's not developed fully enough to be a full-on argument.

I'm late to reading this, but having just read the book, I found this to be a fair, interesting, and thought-provoking review. That said, I think there are two other things that need to be critiqued: 1) a fairly thin source base (printed Presidential papers, but few unprinted letters/memos/etc from the archives) and 2) some major factual errors that arise from using a single source as information (most notably, according to a friend who knows the material, the section on military chaplains).